Emily Dickinson’s Concept Of God In Some Of Her Poems

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Lasmeida Metriana Nababan : Emily Dickinson’s Concept Of God In Some Of Her Poems, 2010.

EMILY DICKINSON’S CONCEPT OF GOD IN

SOME OF HER POEMS

BY :

LASMEIDA METRIANA NABABAN

REG. NO: 080721027

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH SUMATERA

FACULTY OF LETTER

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

MEDAN

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ACKNOWLEDMENTS

I thank to the Almighty Jesus Christ for His blessing and guidance that enables the writer to be able to finish this thesis. Generally all the students of English Department have to report the thesis as the partial fulfillment before finishing their study.

I think that this thesis is not perfect yet because of my lack of knowledge and ability to compose this thesis. In conducting this thesis, I face so many problems, but it is not be the great obstacle for me to finish this thesis. Because facing the problem is one of the previous steps to finish what the problem is.

As human being, none is able to be alone in her own life, without getting any helps from the other else. The friends of me have also helped me in conducting this thesis.

In writing this thesis, I would like to thank to everybody who had helped me finished this thesis :

1. Drs. Syahri Saja, M. A, as The Consultant of me who patiently always gives advice and spends much of his time to correcting this thesis.

2. Dra. Swesana Mardia Lubis, M. Hum, as the Head of English Department. 3. All of the lecturers in English Department Of University of North Sumatera 4. Prof. Syaifuddin, M. A, Ph.D, as The Dean Of University of North Sumatera 5. All of my friends especially to the students of English Department Extension

program.

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7. I still wants to thank to my brothers and sisters, there is no different between you and me because we are the great family.

I think this thesis is not quite perfect yet, so I hope the constructive criticism to make me understand more about my lackness in composing this thesis.

I wish this thesis can fulfill one of the requirements to finish my study from University of North Sumatera. I also hope that, this thesis will be useful for the readers in the future.

Medan, November 2009

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ABSTRACT

Lasmeida Metriana Nababan, Emily Dickinson’s Concept Of God In Some Of Her Poems, University of North Sumatera Medan 2009

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1The Background of The Study

Literature is the class of writings in which imaginative expression, aesthetic form, universality of ideas, and permanence are characteristic features, as fiction, poetry, romance, and drama. ( Pei : 1978, 557). It means that literature is the art of writing that full of expression and idea because it is a product of imagination that expresses the reality into the work of art.

Roberts and Jacobs (1993, 2) classify literature into four categories or genres; they are: prose fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction prose. Poetry expresses a conversation or intercharge that is grounded in the most deeply felt experiences of human beings. Poetry is often created from the desire to escape the logical, as well as expressing feeling other expressions in a tight, condensed manner. Usually, the poet tells her thoughts and feelings into the poem that she created. People create poetry not only to make a sentence but also to bring meanings because every word that they are creating is meaningful. They create poems to express their feeling or experiences in their life.

There is much famous poetry, they usually make a poem to express their feeling about something and one of them is Emily Dickinson’s. She makes a poem based on her life. She is widely considered one of the greatest poets in American literature.

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poetic imagination. The chief tension in her work comes from a different source: her inability to accept the orthodox religious faith of her day and her longing for its spiritual comfort. Dickinson never made a formal declaration of faith and attended services regularly for only a few years.

She was born on Amherst in the 1840s, dominated by the Church and the college but she never joined the Church. She is a reclusive woman and like to spent all her time at home. The facts of her life are few and simple, the interpretations many and complex, That is why I am interested to know how is the way she communicated all her idea, concept of God towards to the reality of her life through the poems.

In this case, Emily Dickinson writes the poem as the description of her attitude and feeling. In Emily Dickinson’s poems she had tells unsatisfied feeling toward God about her life. Emily Dickinson hopes that such barrier could not happened in her life. But in reality it happen. That is why she is always doubt to the existence of God in her life, she thinks that God is never exist in her life and she refuse to the rule of God. So this study will explain how Emily Dickinson’s concept about God in her poems that has a religious theme.

1.2The Problems of The Study

The problems of this study are formulated as follows :

1) How was Emily Dickinson’s concept about the doubt to the existance of God in her poems?

2) In what way does she describe God?

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1.3The Scope of The Study

Emily Dickinson’s concept of God in some of her poems about the doubt of God existance that has the religious theme in Emily Dickinson collected poems by Thomas Jhonson.

1.4The Objectives of The Study

The Objectives of the study are :

1) To find out Emily Dickinson’s Concept about the doubt of God in her poems

2) To know the way she describe God

3) To know the relationship between the concept to her background

1.5The Significance of The Study

At this point, I would give some of the significance of the study. This study gives a valuable lesson to the writer as well as the reader in enriching their mind to understand the way of God exist in life. The other significance is the thesis may be useful for the other students who plan to do further researchesin the similar topic. There are two the significances of the study, they are :

1. The Significance of Theorities :

a) To add the glossary of literature especially in Poetry

b) To describe the reason of the doubt about God’s existence in some of Emily Dickinson’s poems.

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a) As a reference to the readers who are interested in gaining more about poetry especially in Emily Dickinson’s poem that has a religious theme.

1.6Review of The Related Literature

In supprting this proposal, I refer to some related books which are listed as follows:

1. The Heath Anthology American Literature by Paul Lauter.

This book places in the history of American poetry, and describes some famous American poets, along with their poems and their biography from the 19 centuries.

2. The Letters of Emily Dickinson (3 vols) edited by Thomas H. Johnson This book contain his three-volume variorum edition of her poems. It tells us that T. H. Johnson published her poems (3 vol., 1955) and letters (3 vol., 1958).

3. American Literature to 1900 by Lewis Leary

This book lists the collections of the American’s writers. It consits of a biography and critical studies on the writer, and a signed critical essay on his work The biographies, details of education, military service, and marriage(s) are generally given before the usual chronological summary of the life of the writer.

4. An Anthology edited by Charles R .Joy.

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5. Poetry and Prose edited by John Bryson.

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CHAPTER II

THE CLARIFICATIONS OF THE TERMS

2.1 Literary Approach

Literature is a many beautiful things that can be analyzed and interpreted using various combinations of approaches. Most of us have developed a habitual way of reading and understanding based on our belief and value. The study of literature usually used approaches. Approach assumptions dealing with the nature of language teaching and learning. Approach is the level at which assumption and beliefs about language and language learning are specified.

2.1.1 Philosophy Approach

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2.2 Poetry

Poetry ( MedL poetry based on Gk poetes ‘doer creator’ ). It is a comprehensive term which can be taken to cover any kind of metrical composition. ( J. A. Cuddon : 1992 ). However, it is usually empolyed with reservations, and often in contradistinction to serve. The implications are that poetry is a superior form of creation; not necessarily. Therefore, more serious.

Poetry ( ancient Greek : poieo means I create ) is traditionally a written art form ( although there is also an ancient and modern poetry which relies mainly upon oral or pictorial representations ) in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its national and semantic content.

The increase emphasis on the aesthetic of a language and deliberate use of features such as repetition, meter and rhyme are what are commonly used to distinguish poetry from prose, but debates over such distinctions still persits, while the issue is confounded by such forms as poetry and prose. Some modrenist ( such as the Surrealist ) approach this problem of definition by defining poetry not as a literary genre within a set of genres, but as the very manifestation of human imagination, the substance which all creative acts derive from.

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2.3 Concept of God

Concept is that which is conceived in the mind; a general notion or idea. ( Pei : 1978 ).

God is a word that means different things to different people. God is the indescrible, uncreated, self existence, eternal all knowing source of all reality and being. God is much bigger than the human dimension that it corrects definition by human must be a combination of definitions that only truly fit together as one in the realm of the infinite. All concise human definitions for God are incomplete because Gos is infinite, and infinitude is almost the opposite of the human dimension.

The God who is known through philosophy and the God whom I experience as ethical will do not coincide. They are one; but how they are one, I don’t understand. ( Roy 1947 : 108).

Yet, one of the most famous arguments for God’s existence does not rely on any facts learned from observation or experiment.

According to Minton: 1976, there are three kinds for the arguments, they are : 1. Ontological Arguments.

Ontological arguments is an attemp to prove the existance of God with absolute certainty. The concept of God is the concept of “ the greater conceivable being”. It is impossible to believe that God does not exist, because if you are thinking of something as nonexistent, then you are not thinhking of the greatest conceivable being, and, hence, you are not thingking of God.

2. Cosmological Arguments.

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the nature of the world, and could not rely on concepts alone. In Aquinas’s classic Cosmological Arguments, he argues that God is the necessary condition for the existence of certain pervasive facts about the world.

3. Teleological Arguments

The teleological Arguments compares natural objects and systems to those objects which are known to have originated by intelligent design, such as clocks, engines, etc

2.4 Puritanism

Puritanism was a reform movement within English Protestanism that emerged in the 16th century. The movement proposed to purify the Church of England and to invigorate the daily practice of religion. For their program of reform, the Puritans were indebted to John Calvin and the example of the Calvinist tradition. Another source of Puritanism was the Bible, considered the sole authority in matters of faith. The movement remained frustrated until the reign of Charles I ( 1625 – 1649 ), when a political crisis led to civil war and Puritans took control of the English Goverment. Meanwhile, Puritans emigrants had colonized New England, founding Plymouth in 1620 and Massachusetts in 1628 – 1630. The period of the English Revolution of 1610 – 1660 also known as the “Puritan Revolution” marked the height of Puritan influence.

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Most or their religious doctrines were also taken over from Calvinism, including their belief in an all-powerful God. In the 16th century no Protestant doubted the authority of Scripture, the reality of heaven and hell, or the sinfulness of man. Every living person was guilty of sin because of Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Like other Christians of their time, the Puritans also taught the doctrine of a risen Christ who saved mankind from eternal punishment. Some of the Puritans were millenarians, which means that they thought of history as coming to an end with they return of Christ, the last Judgment and the establishment of the Kingdon of the God. The millenarian pleas for reform were based on the expectation that these events would occur fairly soon.

Puritan was entirely English in its origins, yet, the movement achieved its greatest influence in America. Here the Puritans were able to carry out their program without interference and with less disagreement among themselves. The 17th century colonials in New England represent fullest development of the movement..

The first Puritans to arrived i America were Separatist. A new group of Separatist fled England in 1697 – 1609, among them the Reverend Jhon Robinson and members of his conggregation. The found refuge in Leiden, Holland from where a portion of the group – known as Pilgrims – emigrated to America, landing at Plymouth in December 1620. The colony was never large yet its founding commemorated more than that of any other colony in American history. One reason is the moving history of the venture written in the 17th century by Williams Bradforth, Governor of Plymouth colony. His history of Plymouth plantation is a literary masterpiece of the American experience.

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gradually put aside, and through a slow processof Evolution unitariarism emerged out of Congregationlism. The process was complete by 1825.

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father, Edward Dickinson; and yet, last but not least, a space within which she has negotiated a realm of freedom and independence.

Some scholars have made a case for Dickinson's agnosticism or atheism. David Porter puts forth the strong but one-sided claim that she is a poet of utter negativity whose "desolation as an artist lies at the terrifying depth of thought ... where the final No is reached" (170). In a recent study Nina Baym convincingly demonstrates how Dickinson deployed scientific discourse "to unsettle [Amherst] religion" and quotes a series of "scientifically anti-theological" poems which argue the impossibility of knowledge about an afterlife (148-49). However, Dickinson could also conceive of belief as unproblematic, childlike in its simplicity, as in "I never saw a Moor" (Fr 800) or "Some keep the Sabbath going to Church" (Fr 236), and while such unreservedly optimistic statements are rare and tend to belong to the earlier period, they reflect the diversity and fluidity of her religious attitudes. Whereas Dickinson relentlessly examines and dismantles her Calvinist legacy, she hardly ever addresses the question of God's existence but even in moments of disbelief is ready to stipulate that God is. She presents uncertainty as a prerequisite of faith, conceding that certainty, were it possible, would make faith redundant (Fr 978). She also acknowledges that however disturbing the uncertainty can become, to abandon faith is even more difficult than to uphold it: "The abdication of Belief / Makes the Behavior small--/Better an ignis fatuus / Than no illume at all--" (Fr 1581).

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CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY OF RESEARCH

3.1 Research Design

Descriptive qualitative method will be used in this study. Natzir :1988 describes that descriptive method is a method of a research that makes the description of the situation of the events or occurence, so that the method has an intention to accumulate the basic data.

Descriptive design is meant as the procedure of solving the problems by describing the conditions of the object in the present based on the facts and reality. ( Hadary and Mimi 1994 : 73 ).

Best ( 1982 ) says that qualitative studies are those in which the description of observations is not ordinarily expressed in quantitative terms. It is not suggested that numerical measures are never used, but other means of description are emphasized. Qualitative research does not use sample and population as in quantitative research. ( Hadary and Mimi 1994 : 73 ).

For that reason, this research will be done by using descriptive qualitative method, that find out Emily Dickinson’s concept about the doubt of God existence in her Poems, The way she describes God and to find out the concept to the background of her life.

I take thirteen poems to analized, after reading some books, there were thirteen popular poems from Emily Dickinson’s poems, they are

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4. It's easy to invent a Life 5. Of God we ask one favor 6. Over The Fence

7. Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

8. So well I Can’t Live Without I Never Saw a Moor 9. Those — dying then

10. There comes an hour when begging stops 11. Tis One by One

12. What is Paradise

13. Who were The Father and The Son 14. He fumbles at your spirit

15. The heart asks pleasure first,

3.2 Technique of Collecting the Data

Documentary technique will be used to collect the data. It means that the data are got from reading, studying and analyzing the reference. The way to get all the information is having from library research.

3.3 Technique of Analyzing the Data

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CHAPTER IV

THE ANALYSIS OF EMILY DICKINSON’ S CONCEPT OF GOD

IN SOME OF HER POEMS

4.1 The concept That God is Invisble

4.1.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is Invisble In

What Is Paradise (215)

What is — "Paradise" — Who live there —

Are they "Farmers" — Do they "hoe" —

Do they know that this is "Amherst" — And that I — am coming — too —

Do they wear "new shoes" — in "Eden" — Is it always pleasant — there —

Won't they scold us — when we're homesick — Or tell God — how cross we are —

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Ransomed folks — won't laugh at me — Maybe — "Eden" a'n't so lonesome As New England used to be!

In the First stanza, The word paradise is heaven. So in my opinion, this poem talk about heaven. Through this poem, Emily Dickinson wants to get bright description about the place called heaven. We can see that Emily is questioning or more appropriately, she was wondering about what heaven is. Therefore, to reach heaven, we have to obey with all of His words, hence; we will be one of the chosen people. Still, through this poem Emily shows us as that she didn’t know anything about heaven. A place that she heard frequently in her life and also a place that her father always talk about. Emily wants to know about the people those who lives in heaven. She tries to describe the people those who live in heaven. She wants to know if the people who live in heaven are farmers. She also wonders about what those people do in heaven by saying do they hoe. In heaven we talk with another blessed people, we will sing songs for God together with His Angel’s. We just worship Him all the time. They do not work in heaven as Emily’s said. Another message, which is brought through this poem, is the doubt of Emily Dickinson upon God’s existence.

Emily is questioning the belief that there is a person who is called as a father in the sky. We can see a reflection of her concept about God. In here we can see that Emily Dickinson does not believe that God exist.

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believe in God you must believe in heaven and to the contrary if you believe in heaven you must believe in God.

I Never Saw a Moor

I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea

Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be

I never spoke with God Nor Visited in Heaven Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart is given

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about her relationship with God. In Emily’s life she never communicates with God. It means she never prays and goes to chuch. She spent most of her time by writing poems in her bedroom. She communicates with God just by her insulting poems. She also tells us that since she never communicates with God; make her doubtful if she will have a place in heaven. She is doubtful about having a place in heaven as the time when she dead. In the concept of Christianity on the judgments day, God will judge everything we have done on earth during our life times. He will decide if we will sit in the heaven or in the hell. Through this poem Emily Dickinson reflects her concept about God. We can see that this poem that she considers that the role of God is not important in her life.

4.1.3. A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is Invisble In

Those- dying then

Those- dying then, Knew where they went-

They went to God’s Right Hand- That Hand is amputated now And God cannot be found-

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I think in this poem, she wants to tell that she is not believe that God exist. She believe that when we need help God is not there. She says that God cannot found. Here Dickinson’s view of belief is acutely modren. The poem was written in 1882, when modren science and materialism must have encroached upon firm religious belief. Dying believers long for “God’s Right Hand” after death, but the hand does not exit any more and God is invisible. Dickinson obviously suggest the insecurity of faith in God in the modren age. However, even if the Christian belief is delusive like “an ignis fatuus,” Dickinson creates the royal image of “Belief” with the word “abdication” and suggest that the insecure belief is better than “no illume,” nihilism or atheism. The reason why she sticks to the belief might be seen in the first stanza. She refers to Revelation, and focuses attention on the dead people’s travel to heaven. To Dickinson, if God does not exit anymore, there would be no heaven, no house that people can reach after death. Her fear of unbelief derives from the fear that there will be no immortality in heaven. It implies that the Christian doctrine of resurrection is indispensable to her mental security, and that she intensely yearns ror the heavenly world. Finally, while she fears and resist a Calvinistic God, she does not deny him. Her concept to the heavenly father is contadictory.

This is a statement about the actual organization of life, death and eternity, the statement that "Those dying then / Knew" they were headed to "God's Right Hand" was describing "her" beliefs. With this understanding, it was the shock of the imagery of the amputated "Right Hand" to the deeper shock of moving from a description of beliefs.

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respond, the second poem's image of God's amputated hand suggests a deity who is powerless to respond. Obviously, I concluded, the poems represent different theological universes--and demonstrate the inconsistency of Dickinson's beliefs.

There Comes an Hour When Begging Stops

There comes an hour when begging stops, When the long interceding lips

Perceive their prayers is vain “Thou shalt not” is a kinder sword Than from a disappointing God “Disciple, call again.”

Here Emily shows her disappoinment toward God, she feels it is useless to pray because God would not listen.

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On the other hand, even in the age when Arminianism was winning over Calvinism, Dickinson rejected the former and stuck to the latter.

Her view of God is deeply rooted in Calvinism, and her self-image and expectation for heaven also originate in the Calvinist doctrine of sin, the elect, damnation, and God’s omnipotence. It can be argued, then, that whether she resists or accepts Calvinism, she is obviously under it’s influence and that Calvinism is her major concern through her life. In this sense, Emily Dickinson is a Calvinist. In addition and more importantly, to her, Calvinism is a great motivating force in creting poetry. When she tries to challenge Calvinism, she stimulates and enriches her imagination for subversive strategies. Likewise, when she longs for God and heaven, she creates a variety of imagery. In a word, Calvinism vitalizes and develops Dickinson’s poetic imagination.

4.2 The concept That God is Confusing

4.2.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About the confusing God

In Who were The Father and The Son

Who were “the Father and the Son We pondered when we a child And what had they to do with us And when portentous told With inference appaling By Childhood fortified

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Who are “the Father and the Son” Did we demand today

“The Father and the Son” himself Would doubtless specify

But had they the felicity When we desired to know

We better Friends had been perhaps Than time ensure to be-

We start- to learn that we believe But once- entirely-

Belief, it does not fit so well When altered frequently

Who were the Father and the Sonis the poem of Emily Dickinson, written in 1873. It is possible that this poem was written based on her spiritual experience. Since she was still young she had realized that although she was born into a religious family, her faith did not grow well.

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understand about these two personalities. In the concept Trinity, the Father is the Supreme Being in heaven and the Son is Jesus Christ. In fact, this concept often creates a confusing not only among Non-Christian people but also among the Christian themselves.

In the second Stanza, we can see also the simple thought of Emily Dickinson on this matter. She afraid to ask her father about the matter, encouraged her to make her own conclusion about this matter by using the simple thingking as a child. Emily Dickinson, when she was still a child, thought that at least they are no worse than they have been described, her simple conclusion as a child is that the Father and the Son are perfect.

In third stanza, we can see that as the time goes by she is still have a question in her mind about this matter. She still doesn’t get the bright description of the Father and the Son. Furthermore, it is reflected that the hope of Emily Dickinson that actually at the time she wrote this poem is that the Father and the Son will be described specifically. Thus, she will get a bright description of these figures. In this poem, it is also reflected that eventhough Emily Dickinson had tried to learn to believe in the concept of Trinity, but she still feels that it is beyond her logic.

In fourth Stanza, She said that she starts to learn to believe it, it means that she had been trying to learn to believe it but in fact, she thought that a belief will not be acceptable if it is altered frequently, therefore she decided to rebel and return at home.

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4.3 The concept to the doubt of God’s love

4.3.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About the doubt of God’s

love In So Well That I Can Live Without

So well that I can live without I love thee- then How well is that? As well as Jesus?

Prove it to me That He- loved Men As I love- thee

This poem is written in 1862, this the form of her broken heart since she had to lose another man who made her fall in love. This poem only consits of one stanza.

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Charles Wordsworth prefers to serve God than to visit her. We can see another reflection of Emily Dickinson’s concept of God, although basically this poem is the story of Rev. Charles Wordsworth. In this poem we can see that according to Emily Dickinson, God and His love toward men is not bigger than she does. The love of God toward men is not as much as the men thought. The love of God is still doubtful.

4.3.2.A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About the doubt of God’s

love In It's easy to invent a Life — (724)

It's easy to invent a Life — God does it — every Day — Creation — but the Gambol Of His Authority —

It's easy to efface it — The thrifty Deity

Could scarce afford Eternity To Spontaneity —

The Perished Patterns murmur — But His Perturbless Plan

Proceed — inserting Here — a Sun — There — leaving out a Man —

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In the second stanza She tries to tell that for her God is “thrifty” and not generous with grace. Emily’s God seems unprincipld, since the incessantly creates and effaces life from “ Gambol”. However , Dickinson considers God to have sovereign authority and to control everything. It suggest that even though she is skeptical about God’s justice, she accepts the Calvinistic doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

4.4 The concept That God is Jealous

4.4.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept that God is jealous In God

is Indeed A Jealous God

God is indeed a jealous God He can also bear to see

That we had rather not with Him But with each other play

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4.5 The concept That God is Selfish

4.5.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About That God is Selfish In

Over the Fence

Over the fence Strawberries- grow- Over the fence

I could climb- if I tried, I know- Berries are nice

But if I stained my Apron God would certainly scold Oh, dear, I guess if I were a boy He’d climb- if He could

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disappointment toward God is shown by making a comparison of God is a boy. Through this poem, Emily Dickinson blames God for her limitation as a woman. She is really disappointed, thus, she compares Him with a boy. She believes that if God is just an ordinary person. He will do anything to achieve her dreams. For her God just wants women to serve Him and become a missionary. Shortly, Emily Dickinson considers Him as a selfish God.

4.6 The concept That God is Nature

4.6.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is nature In

Some keep The Sabbath Going To Church

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — I keep it, staying at Home —

With a Bobolink for a Chorister — And an Orchard, for a Dome —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice — I just wear my Wings —

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman — And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last — I'm going, all along.

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Dickinson’s individuality and creatifity in the field of religion in her poem “ Some keep the sabbath going to church”. In the first stanza I thing she wants to contrast people activities to her activity, when people go the church to pray and to do the ceremonial but she is better to stay at home in the silence of the beauty of the nature only with the sound of nature.

In the second stanza I thing it is almost the same of the first stanza. She also wants to contrast the activities related to the ceremonial in the sabbath. When people go to the church with the luxurious but for her, it is enough just close to the nature with simple appearrance. When the other sings in the church, she chooses to hear the sounds of nature.

In the third Stanza, she contrast the voice of God by the preacher and by the sound of nature.

This delightful work explains how instead of attending a Sunday service, Dickinson keeps holy the Sabbath by remaining at home. She explain her Sunday by saying, “ God preaches, - a noted clergyman,- and the sermon is never long ; so instead of getting to heaven at last. I’m going all along!”. With simple language , Dickinson explains that the word of God does not to be preached in a chapel, but can be found at any walk of life. God is portrayed as a personal and loving being, contradictory to the God of the fire and brimstone that was often preached during the nineteenth century. She also reveals an inner belief of hers that, contrary to what was believed in her day, going to Heaven is not an arduous task of trying.

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4.7.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About That God is Possesive

In He fumbles at your spirit

He fumbles at your spirit As players at the keys

Before they drop full music on; He stuns you by degrees,

Prepares your brittle substance For the ethereal blow,

By fainter hammers, further heard, Then nearer, then so slow

Your breath has time to straighten, Your brain to bubble cool,-- Deals one imperial thunderbolt That scalps your naked soul.

When winds take Forests in their Paws-- The Universe is still.

In the first stanza, I thing the phrase "He fumbles" with the keys, which represent the spirit or soul, and stuns "by degrees." Dickinson uses a musician's playing to describe God's conversion technique. The initial approach is tentative

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spiritual; therefore, the blow of the (piano) hammers is ethereal. (The meaning of

ethereal being used here is heavenly or celestial.) Because of God's might and status,

the thunderbolt is "imperial.

In the third stanza, ." The savagery of God is insisted upon not only because he scalps, which is horrifying enough, but also because he scalps a defenseless victim ("naked soul"). Dickinson uses "paw," rather than hand, as the final expression of God's ferocity. Think of who or what has paws.

This is a poem of possession. The question is, possession by whom or what? I have classified this under the heading of "God" and suggest that Dickinson is describing the experience of religious conversion. However, another possibility is possession by poetic fervor. Dickinson may be describing the poet's relationship to her own poetic power or the compulsion to write. The fact that this force is male is no argument against this interpretation; male poets traditionally refer to their muse or poetic inspiration/fervor as the opposite sex or female. No matter how you interpret the unnamed "He," the way that the images function and Dickinson's attitude toward the possession are essentially the same.

4.8 The concept That God is suffer maker

4.8.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About That That God is

suffer maker In The heart asks pleasure first

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And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die.

I think in this poem, at the first stanza, she try to descride that the requests of the heart are arranged in a hierarchy or order of importance; the first request is for pleasure, but the remaining requests ask for relief from pain. The pain increases as the poem goes on; this is the reason that the remedies to relieve the pain become increasingly extreme, with the final request being for death.

That the heart "asks" indicates its lower or dependent status; another has the power to grant the request. Listing pleasure as the first request might suggest that it is the most important one. But does the rest of the poem support this assumption? The number of lines devoted to suffering overwhelm the one line devoted to pleasure. Similarly, the degree of suffering implied by the increasingly desperate requests for relief from pain minimizes the importance of pleasure. The last line of stanza one, with its request to "deaden" suffering, anticipates or foreshadows the final request for literal death. (A medicine is anything that relieves or lessens pain.)

It is God who has the power to grant relief from pain. The implication is that He has the power to inflict it also. Dickinson judging God guilty of inflicting pain upon humanity. She emphasizing the pain and God's culpability.

In the second stanza, I think The final irony is the phrasing of the request to die--"the

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opens up vistas of freedom; however, in this poem liberty is the freedom to die to escape pain. By using "liberty," is Dickinson suggesting that this is a human right? God has the power to allow liberty or to deny it. That God may deny this liberty and that the heart must request liberty further portray God as an oppressor.

This implication is made explicit with her calling God "Inquisitor." Historically, the Inquisition was established by the Roman Catholic Church in the thirteenth century to search out and punish heretics. It came to be associated, particularly in Protestant countries, as a cruel, unjust institution which tortured innocent victims and even burned them at the stake. In using the term "Inquisitor," is Dickinson judging God guilty of inflicting pain upon humanity? Listing the requests for relief ("And then...And then...And then...And then") has a cumulative effect, she emphasizing the pain and God's culpability. The use of the word "will" for God makes him totally responsible for humanity's continuing to suffer because He chooses to withhold death.

4.9 The concept That God is Hypocrite

4.9.1 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is Hypocrite

In Tis One by One — the Father counts — (545)

'Tis One by One — the Father counts — And then a Tract between

Set Cypherless — to teach the Eye The Value of its Ten —

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Then Numerals are dowered back — Adorning all the Rule —

'Tis mostly Slate and Pencil — And Darkness on the School Distracts the Children's fingers — Still the Eternal Rule

Regards least Cypherer alike With Leader of the Band —

And every separate Urchin's Sum — Is fashioned for his hand —

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4.9.2 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is Hypocrite

In Of God we ask one favor, (1601)

Of God we ask one favor, That we may be forgiven —

For what, he is presumed to know — The Crime, from us, is hidden — Immured the whole of Life Within a magic Prison We reprimand the Happiness That too competes with Heaven

This poem was written in 1884. and consits of one stanza. I think in this poem she wants to tell us that she doubt that God is kind. If we pray and asking a bless from God, she doubt that God will give it straightly for us because she think That God is Hypocrite. He allows us to pray just to show Him that we have sin.

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4.9.3 A Reflection of Emily Dickinson’s Concept About God is Hypocrite In

God made a little Gentian

God made a little Gentian It tried to be a rose

And failed, and all the summer laughed But just before the snows

There came a purple creator That ravised all the hill;

And the summer hid her forehead, And mockery was still

The frosts were her condition; The Tyrian would not come Until the North evoked it, “Creator! Shall I bloom?

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1 Conclution

After interpreting Emily Dickinson’ concept about God in her poems, I can find many concept about God for her . the conclusions are drawn as follows:

1. Emily Dickinson blames God for her misery.

2. She is doubtful toward God existence in her life. She still thinks that the existance of God is still need to be proven due to the identities of three God

3. God cannot do anything to relief her misery.

4. God is a jealous and selfish God since He doesn’t do anything to make her burden lighter and just wants her to serve Him. God also takes all the people that she really loved away from her.

5. His role in Dickinson’s life is not important to her.

6. The causes of Emily Dickinson’ concept about God are her disappointments toward God works in her life and also because the vitizens of Amherst obliged women to be misionary.

7. Emily Dickinson was a Calvinistic and she is influence by the Calvinistic in making a poetry.

8. Emily Dickinson do not believe in God’s words. For her it is ridicules 9. She can found God in the beauty of Nature.

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5.2 Suggestion

In relation to the conclusions above, the suggestion are as the following: 1. The reader has a good knowledge of Emily Dickinson’s poems. Then the readres

can analysis the poems.

2. The students should enlarge their knowledge not only the content of the poem but also the background of the poet.

3. The readre can increase their understanding about poems by reading and analyzing the poem

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REFERENCES

Arnold, Matthew. 1956. Poetry and Prose edited by John Bryson, Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. 1993. An Introduction to Reading and

Writing, London: Prentice Hall.

Johnson, Thomas. 1982. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, New York: Harvard Press.

Lauter, Paul. 1994. The Heath Anthology of American Literature, London: D.C. Heath And Company.

Leary, Lewis. 1980. American Literature to 1900, London: The Macmillan Press Ltd. Pei, Mario. 1978. The Lexicon Webster Dictionary (Encyclopedia Edition), New

York: The English-Language Institute of America, Inc.

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APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1 : EMILY DICKINSON’S BIOGRAPHY

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) by Dori Anne Abbott (7 July 1998) From the hotbed of Puritanism, the birthplace of Transcendentalism, and a family of great renown comes one of the most fascinating female poets of our times. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts. As the granddaughter of one of the founders of Amherst College, and the daughter of a prominent politician, Dickinson had the benefit of a proper upbringing and an excellent education.

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approach, her poetry reflects a mind less interested in absolute answers to questions than in exploring and examining the questions themselves. That is not to say, however, that her poems were not carefully crafted; because indeed they were. Each word was weighed against its many synonyms for its ability to impact the reader with the exact emotion Dickinson desired. She believed that while inspiration may be all-sufficient when present, it seldom came even to great poets. Her poetic style was fragmented, enigmatic, abstract, and forcefully sudden in emotion.

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APPENDIX 1I : AMERICAN LITERATURE IN THE 19th CENTURY

Popular American Literature of the 19th Century collects examples of a wide range of

literature including tracts, plays, poems, gift books, dime novels, school books, and serialized

newspaper novels. Featuring twenty-five works in their entirety and several more in extensive

excerpts, it includes works by the American Tract Society, Catharine Esther Beecher, Bret

Harte, Ik Marvel, William Holmes McGuffey, Maria Monk, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, E. D. E.

N. Southworth, Mason Locke Weems, and many others. The selections cover many important

themes including singleness and marriage, domesticity and gender roles, masculinity, proper

conduct, social reform, temperance, religion, urban and rural life, race, slavery, class, science,

business, and more. Ideal for courses in nineteenth-century American literature, surveys of

American literature, and introductory courses in American studies, Popular American

Literature of the 19th Century is also a rich resource for anyone interested in American

popular culture.

American poetry in the 19th century was rich and varied, ranging from the symbolic fantasies of Edgar Allan Poe through the moralistic quatrains of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to the revolutionary free verse of Walt Whitman. In the privacy of her study Emily Dickinson developed her own forms and pursued her own visions, she was influenced at all by other writers, they were John Keats, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Isaac Watts (his hymns), and the biblical prophets.

Fig. 1 Washington Irving (1783 - 1859)

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Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, which was published serially in 1819-20. William Cullen Bryant emerged in the 1820s as a poet of international stature. His "Thanatopsis"

(1817), influenced by the English Graveyard Poets, linked American literature to the emerging English romanticism. Still, despite European influences, American writers attempted to create a distinctive literature during a time of rising literary nationalism. Noah Webster contributed An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828),

in which he insisted that the country possessed its own language. The nationalist theme was echoed by William Ellery Channing, Edward Everett, and most memorably by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard, "The American Scholar" (1837), which Oliver Wendell Holmes called "our intellectual Declaration of Independence."

James Fenimore Cooper was the first important American novelist to succeed with

subjects and settings that are largely American. Cooper achieved international prominence with his second novel, The Spy (1821), a tale of the Revolution. His many novels blending history and romance resulted in his being called "the American [Sir Walter] Scott," a title that put him in the company of one of the period's most popular and respected authors. Cooper became best known for his Leatherstocking Tales, five novels that run from The Pioneers (1823) to The Deerslayer

Much of Cooper's sense of America was caught by the Fireside Poets, who celebrated American history and a benign American nature. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1841). Cooper's settings capture the American idea of nature, and his hero, Natty Bumppo, expresses the self-reliant, pioneering spirit of America.

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displayed his skill at telling a story in verse in Hiawatha (1855), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Evangeline (1847). But Longfellow and his contemporaries succeeded best in public poetry intended for recitation. Still powerful are Longfellow'sThe Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1863), John Greenleaf Whittier's "Barbara Freitchie" (1863), and Oliver Wendell Holmes's "Old

Ironsides" (1830).

Edgar Allan Poe stood apart from literary nationalism and represented a gloomier

side of romanticism. As a reviewer, he was a harsh critic of second-rate American writing, but he dabbled in many popular sensationalistic forms. His often technically complex poetry uses commonplace romantic themes but gives them a philosophical and mystical application. Many of his short stories remain internationally famous, and he may be said to have invented the detective story. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Tell-Tale Heart

The American renaissance, also known as the American romantic movement, began with the maturing of American literature in the 1830s and 1840s and ended with its flowering in the 1850s. During the 1830s, Ralph Waldo Emerson established himself as the spokesman for transcendentalism, first set forth in his essay

," Poe perfected the tale of gothic horror.

Fig. 3 Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849)

American Renaissance

Nature (1836). The group known as the transcendentalists that gathered around him in Concord, Mass., included Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, and William Ellery Channing, who joined with Emerson in the publication of The Dial

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individual, Emerson said, finds his or her own way to transcendence through self-knowledge, self-reliance, and the contemplation of nature.

Henry David Thoreau came closest to putting Emerson's ideas into practice. After

two intermittent years at Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., he wrote Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In this book, Thoreau observes nature from the viewpoint of a naturalist-philosopher reflecting on the quiet desperation of humanity and the transcendental solace of the natural world. No less consciously indebted to Emerson was Walt Whitman, who dedicated the first edition of his poetry, Leaves of Grass (1855), to him. Whitman celebrated an untrammeled communion with nature with overtones of sensuality that appeared shocking even though his poetry expressed sound transcendental doctrine. Whitman also took seriously Emerson's appeal for American originality; he devised a loose, "natural" form of versification that seemed unpoetic and jarring to his contemporaries. After the Civil War, Whitman gained wider acceptance with his elegy on the death of Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed" (1865). Whitman's prose works include Democratic Vistas (1871), containing his philosophy of American democracy along with prophecies of its future greatness and the coming greatness of its literature, and Specimen Days (1882), an account of his Civil War experiences as a volunteer nurse.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne represents American romanticism with its roots firmly planted

in the Puritan past. His stories were collected in Twice-Told Tales (1837), which established his importance as an American writer. Some were tales of the Puritans and of early American history; others used a mixture of symbolism and allegory that, together with certain recurrent themes, was carried over into Hawthorne's novels. His masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850), is a symbolic romance set in Puritan New England. Hawthorne had been attracted to Emerson's thought but rejected its optimism both here and in The Blithedale Romance

Herman Melville also rejected Emerson's philosophy. His first novel,

(1852), a novel based on the transcendentalists' utopian experiment, Brook Farm.

Fig. 4 Herman Melville (1819 - 1891)

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rediscovered in the 1920s by critics and scholars, whose reassessments established Melville as a superior American writer.

Post-Civil War Literature

The post-Civil War period is roughly the period from the rise of realism to the advent of naturalism, up to World War I. The war itself affected literature less than did the industrial expansion that followed it. Nevertheless, the war was the basis for poetry by Melville, Emerson, Lowell, and Whitman, and of significant autobiographical accounts by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Francis Adams Jr., and Ulysses S. Grant.

Mark Twain's aesthetic was formed by the sketches of the Old Southwestern

humorists who published their accounts of hunting, drinking, gambling, courting rituals, horse races, assorted cons, and "low life" pranks in newspapers such as William T. Porter's Spirit of the Times, the New Orleans Delta and Picayune, the St.

Louis Reveille, and the Cincinnati News. The Old Southwest, the western sections of the eastern states and what is now roughly the Midwest, proved a congenial turf for tales that pitted the elevated, "proper" diction of a gentleman narrator against the vivid vernacular speech of a ring-tailed roarer.

The result was an unabashedly masculine humor, one that, by our standards, often seems politically incorrect. Characters such as George Washington Harris's Sut Lovingood were thoroughgoing misogynists, racist to their bones, anti-Semitic, and just plain ornery. In their rough frontier environment, a good joke maimed a person, a great joke killed him.

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The choice of the pen name Mark Twain by Samuel Clemens followed the general practice common among Old Southwestern humorists who wrote between 1820 and 1850: Joel Chandler Harris as Uncle Remus, David Ross Locke as Petroleum

Vesuvius Nasby, and Charles Farrar Browne as Artemas Ward. Twain, however,

raised their level of humor to new heights, first by leading the movement away from the romanticism typical of the American renaissance to a worldly realism that dealt with actual places and situations; and then by developing a style that produced equivalents of American speech never before attempted. What various local colorists did to nearly unreadable excess, Twain perfected into an idiom that was simultaneously the illusion of actual speech and a vehicle for deeply American tales.

Twain drew extensively from his personal experiences: on his own travels for The

Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing It (1872), on his days as a riverboat pilot for Life on the Mississippi (1883), and on his youth for his boyhood stories Tom Sawyer (1876) and the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

As novelists and critics, William Dean Howells and Henry James contributed to the shift from romance to realism. Howells's

(1884). Huckleberry Finn is considered by many critics to be the first modern American novel; it is undoubtedly one of the great American literary achievements.

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Europeans (1878). In The Bostonians (1886) he satirized New England reformers and philanthropists. As prolific as Howells, James was also a self-conscious critic and an advocate of realism. In his last novels, notably The Golden Bowl (1904), James created a new, complex language and symbolism for the novel that heralded the age of modernism.

Regionalism, the literature of particular sections of the country, flourished, however. Many authors who used this form of realistic local color were women, among them Willa Cather, Kate Chopin, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Ellen Glasgow, Sarah

Orne Jewett, and Edith Wharton. Other writers of the period who are thought of as

regionalists are Ambrose Bierce, Hamlin Garland, and Bret Harte. Much of the literature of African Americans was regional in setting, by force of circumstance. Charles Chesnutt and William Wells Brown were early black novelists. In Lyrics

of Lowly Life (1896), the poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar used dialect and humble settings in a blend of pathos and humor. Some of the most powerful writing by black Americans has been autobiographical; in the post-Civil War period, works depicting the experiences of black Americans include The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), Up from Slavery (1901) by Booker T. Washington, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912) by James Weldon

Johnson, and The Souls of Black Folk

In the 1890's novels emphasizing a harsher view of reality began to appear, marking the beginnings of American naturalism. Stephen Crane's,

(1903) by W. E. B. Du Bois

Fig. 6 Stephen Crane (1871 - 1910)

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Emily Dickinson’s Concept Of God In Some Of Her Poems